I totally agree. In this video one of the guys basically says whenever he sees a turn 1 Grief->Reanimate->Grief or an Initiative creature he just scoops and decides its not worth playing that game. I get that this on the extreme side, but when you have players activity deciding to just scoop instead of playing out a game, because of how mentally exasperating it is, I wonder what the f- are we even doing! This is a GAME. This screams to me local/community ban list. I were running a store and trying to get people to come out, I would just manage my own banlist, but a community created one would go the furthest I think.

Grief, in my opinion, was a mistake. It should really be banned in all formats (except those where it's normal to restrict instead). In the right deck, it's a 1-drop 3/2 menace that double/triple thoughtsiezes before your opponent can drop a land into play.

But hey, they fixed that problem by banning Fury in modern, right?

As for the "no changes" B&R, I wish they were a little more willing to unban cards. For example, I wonder if Invoke Despair could come back to standard at this point (despite it rotating out soon anyway). Anyway, I guess I'm just looking forward to rotation to change up standard since it feels mostly solved (a lot of the same decks have been on top for a while now, with minor changes each new set).